Page 161 of Eternal
AZRA
“Look After You” by The Fray
Present
The knife slips from my fingers, clattering against the stone. I press my hands to my face, the blood smearing across my skin.
I’ve lost it.
I fucking lost it.
Then my phone rings. The sound cuts through the night, through my head, through my shaking body.
I blink down at it, barely registering the name flashing on the screen.Damir.And I picked it up.
“I’m here. Where are you?” He asks almost as if he knew what I just did.
“I’m coming.”
I step back away from the corpse, away from the fountain, away from the question.
I wipe the blade against my clothes and use it to smooth my hair back. And absentmindedly, I press my fingers to my lips to stop their shaking.
Then I walk away, bloodied, breathless, tired. The street is quiet, but my mind never is.
Blood dries against my skin, stiffens my clothes. My breath is still uneven, my pulse erratic, and I walk like I’m in a dream, like I’m high, and maybe I am, onviolence. Or maybe it’s the exhaustion creeping in, the kind that makes you feel like you’re living outside your own body and witnessing how bad you look.
Why am I thinking about my life right now?
This isn’t the time to let wounds reopen. I can’t afford it, I don’t even know if I have it in me to close them back up again.
After a few minutes of walking out of the complex, I reached the meeting place.
Damir sits on his bike, one hand on the handlebar the other resting on his thigh. He looks up the second I step into view, and the moment his eyes land on me, his fingers curl and his shoulders tense.
For a second, he doesn’t move, he stares at me coldly, visor up, ocean eyes through a storm. I can only see them from his helmet. Maybe he’ll think this is my Halloween costume, maybe he’ll laugh.
Then he swings his leg off the bike and strides toward me. “What the fuck happened?”
His voice is strangely concerned,protective, as if I’m something worth protecting.How? How can he see me like that? How does he look at me, covered in blood, and still see a person?
I stare back at him, trying to find it in myself to feel like one. Trying to remember what it’s like to be fragile, to be something that can be saved.
I can’t.
“I’ll…I’ll explain later.”
He stops right in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. His gaze drags over me delicately, my face, my hands, the blood soaking through my clothes.
“Are you hurt?” He asked softly.
Am I?Yes. But does it matter? “No.”
He exhales, like he was holding his breath, waiting for that lie. Then he moves, his long fingers brushing against my wrist and they’re so hesitant, as if he was waiting for me to pull away.
But I don’t.
I should step back, should remind him who I am, what I’ve done. But I let him touch me, let his warmth seep into my frozen skin.
